A reader’s suggestion, this. Good idea, even though it’s more of a contractual drafting or opinions point than a general legal writing tip.

Shall, will and must
The difference is to a large extent idiomatic – that is, subject more to instinct and feel than hard-and-fast grammatical rules. Usage has also changed over the centuries, and varies between North America and Britain. What follows is a distillation, as best I can manage.

In classic usage, shall is used in the first person (I, we) to indicate a wish or ‘mere futurity’. To say I will or …

“Happy clients are all alike; every unhappy client is unhappy in one’s own way.” (Not Tolstoy)

This is the first in a series of articles inspired from Justice Carole Curtis’s Dealing with the Difficult Client (written when she was a lawyer). One of our most popular downloads, the article covers 9 kinds of difficult clients and how you can work with them. Let’s start with the angry client.

An angry client can take its toll on your ability to practice. Seasoned lawyers can likely recall their most angry clients by name and recite what happened and how. It’s not a …

In training sessions we always advise articling students to start off their research using secondary sources. While there are instances where it is appropriate to start off research by searching case law and legislation, using secondary sources generally is far more time-efficient since it usually tells you what the relevant legislation and leading cases are. However once you’ve found a reference to a case that appears to be on point, you should not just rely on the summary, but actually read the case. We’ve run into more than one instance where the summary said something quite different from what the …

First off, the verb is quote and the noun really should be quotation – but I would be fighting a pointless rearguard action in trying to stop people from talking about a quote.

Single and double quotation marks
In the UK, single quotation marks (usually called ‘inverted commas’) are the default, with anything quoted within a quotation going in double quotation marks, like so: She said, ‘The bus driver told me, “You can’t bring such a large animal onto the bus, madam”, but in the end he let me.’

In the US, the position is reversed: double quotation marks …

It’s a new year. Some of us have resolutions that keep us true to what we want to get out of it. Those of us who don’t are still fresh from the holidays and keen on making the most of it. It’s a great time to start planning a retreat for your law firm. Perfect timing, in fact, if you’d like it to take place in the summer or fall.

So, today’s tip?

If you want your next law firm retreat to count, give it a purpose that’s sure to make a mark.

Don’t waste your previous day away with …

This is part 2 of a series on questions you should ask about any electronic research source.  See part 1 of this series here.

2. What constitutes a RECORD?

What are the individual things the database consists of?

Some case law databases, like Saskatchewan Cases or the Canadian Abridgment, consist of summaries or digests. Others, like CanLII, consist of primary law – judgments and legislation. In others, such as the case law components of Quicklaw and WestlawNext, you can search a combination of summaries and full-text documents. Knowing if you are searching a short summary or full-text decision is …

Openings and closing of business correspondence, that is.

My father, an old-fashioned lawyer if there ever was one, once said there are only two ways to start and close a business letter: either Dear Sir/Yours faithfully or Dear Mr So-and-so/Yours truly, depending on one’s level of acquaintance with the recipient. (And not very truly: one is true or one is not, no more no less.)

There is a certain simplicity to that, and it can be made female-friendly without difficulty. My own views follow.

Beginnings
Younger folk appear to have this strange view that …

One difficulty with finding labour arbitration decisions is a lack of uniformity in the style of cause; sometimes the union’s name may be fully spelled out, other times it may be abbreviated, or it may be omitted altogether and the name of the griever used. As a result, it can be faster to find a decision by searching by arbitrator’s name and the dates rather than the party names.

CanLII, Quicklaw and WestlawNext all carry labour arbitration decisions, although their coverage varies. You can find them in the following databases:

CanLII

• Federal Labour Arbitration Awards (incomplete coverage from 1989 on)

It seems there is never a shortage of bad news going around. 2016 has certainly had its share. Brexit, the unexpected presidency of Donald Trump, corporate restructures, not to mention turbulent financial markets. Most people approach the New Year with excitement and hope. However, what happens after the first bit of bad news hits your world? Whether its job loss, health crisis or stock market volatility? How do you handle it? What can you do learn from, thrive and find opportunity in it?

In baseball you can only score points/runs by taking risks. Playing it safe is not progress. Progress …

Oh, so many of these – but I’ll mention just a few (for now).

Can not
No. It’s one word in modern English: cannot. And when you say it, the emphasis is generally on the first syllable.

Sometime
Spell-check thinks this always has to be one word. It doesn’t. As a single word, it means ‘former’: Bob Sharpe, sometime dean of law at U. of T., is now on the Ontario Court of Appeal. But Let’s have coffee some time and At some time in the future, we’ll see … (I acknowledge, however, that current usage may be against …